Brian Ashcraft

This week, photos of Korean contestants surfaced online. The photos all seemed eerily similar. Plastic surgery was blamed for these "clone contestants". If only it were that simple.

It was a Japanese blog, which specializes in translating Korean news, that was one of the first to upload the images. However, when said images reached English cyberspace (via Reddit), these were simply listed as "Miss Korea 2013 contestants".

That isn't exactly true. They are actually the 2013 Miss Daegu contestants and not Miss Korea contestants. The winner of the Miss Daegu contest competes in the Miss Korea pageant. It's a bit like saying Miss Texas contestants are Miss America contestants. They're not.

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What's more, the below photo was uploaded on Reddit as an example of how the contestants look prior to being processed. However, they're not actually the alleged "clone contestants". They're actually contestants for Miss Seoul (more here on Beauty Hankook). So, of course, they'd look different. They're totally different people.

Then, what do the Miss Daegu contestants, the ones who supposedly have the same plastic surgery, actually look like?

This.

And this. As tipster Sang points out, there was recently a training session held at Dae Kyung University for all the women competing in the Miss Daegu contest. You can see the contestants. They don't all look eerily the same. They look different.

The original photos, which caused this controversy, look processed to hell and back, with maxed out blur effects (GIF via Reddit).

But those are pictures. Here are videos of Miss Daegu contestants. Likewise, they all look different.

The assumption is now that the contestants wore their make-up in a similar style and, more likely, the same person Photoshopped the contestants. That would explain why all their smiles and faces are incredibly similar.

But, you say, they're not in fancy outfits and fancy make-up? That's what made them look like clone contestants, you add. In the video below, you can see them wearing make-up and in dresses.

And they look different. Well, as different as beauty pageant contestants can look. As our colleagues at Jezebel and Gawker pointed out, American beauty queens can start to blur together, too. And it certainly doesn't mean none of these women are plastic surgery free—which, honestly, seems like a personal and private choice. What it does mean is that the unintentional odd digital Miss Daegu images don't reflect their real counterparts.